Pakistan Army Chief Gen Raheel demands UK Extradite Baloch Activists

On January 15th, the British government hosted a high-level security meeting that included Pakistan’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Secretary of Defence Michael Fallon, and top-ranking security officials. During the meeting, General Sharif urged Britain to take action against Baloch separatist leaders and activists living in the UK. Incidentally, many of those Baloch activists had been displaced from their homes and sought refuge in the UK because of violence and instability in Balochistan, a state of affairs for which the Pakistani government bears significant responsibility. Requests of this nature by Pakistani officials are not unprecedented. During the Labour administration of Gordon Brown, the dictator Pervez Musharraf also demanded that British authorities detain and charge Baloch activists living in Britain. The Brown administration acquiesced to this demand, arresting the renowned self-exiled Baloch leader Hyrbyair Marri, and Baloch activist Faiz Baloch, on terrorism-related charges. Many Baloch activists responded by organizing peaceful rallies to denounce the arrests. Among others, well-known human rights activist Peter Tatchell played a key role in highlighting the injustice of the situation, and proclaiming the innocence of the arrestees. Due to a lack of evidentiary support for Musharraf’s accusations, a jury in the town of Woolwich, in southeast England, acquitted both men on February 11th 2009. In response to Sharif’s recent overtures, Marri released an Urdu-language statement, calling on the British government to protect and respect the rights of Baloch political activists. He condemned human rights violations in Balochistan by the Pakistani government, including wrongful detentions and extrajudicial executions. He also alleged that governments which lend military support to the Pakistani government in the name of “counter-terrorism”, including the U.S. and China, are effectively providing material support for Islamabad’s repression of the Baloch independence struggle. Finally, he pointed to the historical relationship between Britain and Balochistan, including an 1876 accord consummated between the rulers of Kalat and the British Raj, in which London’s representatives pledged to respect the territory’s independence. For years, Islamabad has had an ambiguous relationship with extremist groups, including the Taliban. In the first decade of this millennium, while the U.S. and its allies were scouring the deserts of Central Asia in pursuit of the world’s most notorious jihadist, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan’s army generals flatly denied his presence in Pakistan. Nonetheless, in May of 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs located and assassinated Bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad—an event that risked triggering an international incident between Pakistan and the U.S. To this day, Pakistani officials deny having possessed any intelligence of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, despite the fact Bin Laden’s compound was located less than a mile away from the Pakistan Military Academy. Furthermore, various western governments suspect that current al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is also now living in seclusion in Pakistan. Indian authorities have long beseeched Pakistan to extradite Dawood Ibrahim, the alleged mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai bombing, and an alleged accomplice to the 2008 bombing in the same city, for trial in an Indian court. In 2003, Ibrahim was declared a terrorist by the United States, and the Bush administration imposed a number of economic sanctions against him and his associates. Ibrahim, along with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and numerous other violent extremists operate within Pakistan today. Groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi continue to launch attacks from inside Pakistan, targeting civilians, and members of religious and ethnic minorities in particular. For many years Baloch leaders and activists have worked to expose violent extremist operations in Balochistan, such as the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura; their efforts to highlight the presence of these organizations continue. As is their wont, many Baloch people chose to boycott the 2013 Pakistani general election, signalling their refusal to recognize the authority of the Pakistani state over their territory. Balochistan’s current chief minister, Dr. Malik Baloch, took power by default in the election, as no opposition candidate was nominated. Due to the ease with which he ascended to the office of chief minister, and his apparently cozy relationship with Islamabad, Baloch is perceived by many native Baloch people as a sycophantic “rubber-stamp” candidate. Baloch claims that the frequency of abductions and killings has declined during his administration, but human rights groups based in the region have challenged this assertion. Officials and representatives within the Pakistani government have demonstrated their ineffectiveness when it comes to addressing serious human rights abuses and violence in Balochistan. A total of more than 21,000 Baloch have been abducted by security forces, and thousands have been extra-judicially executed while in state custody. Self-exiled Baloch leaders and activists are determined to expose the Pakistani state’s atrocities, and urge world leaders to take action against Pakistan. Several Baloch legal activists argue that enough evidence exists to bring charges against Pakistani army generals at the UN’s International Court of Justice. The list of alleged offences is long, and includes disappearances and illegal detentions, extrajudicial executions, and bombardments of villages and towns that have resulted in many civilian deaths. However, as only UN member states are entitled to institute legal proceedings before the Court, Baloch activists would need the support of at least one national government in order to initiate that process.Reporter - Kyle
FarquharsonProducer - Aziz BalochVideo Editing - Shawn Forbes